Jeff Sessions' marijuana crackdown leaves Michigan in the lurch

Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinds an Obama-era policy that allowed legal marijuana to flourish in states across the country. Sessions says federal prosecutors should decide on their own whether to devote resources to marijuana cases. (Jan. 4)
AP

Michigan medical marijuana providers aren't surprised at the news from Washington D.C. — that President Donald Trump's U.S. Department of Justice will roll back an Obama-era policy against enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states whose voters have approved the use and sale medical or recreational marijuana.

For U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse course is bad policy, not least because Sessions and the rest of the the folks currently running Washington are Republicans, small-government types who tend to believe the federal government should respect states' rights.

Back in 2008, 63% of Michigan voters cast ballots to approve medical marijuana. A ballot initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana is en route to the 2018 ballot, and it's widely expected to pass — in states like Washington and Colorado, voters approved recreational marijuana laws by comfortable margins.

That 59% of Michiganders had approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage was used by Michigan Attorney General (and present Republican gubernatorial candidate) Bill Schuette as one rationale for his all-the-way-to-the-U.S.-Supreme-Court fight to keep provisions against it in place, long after it was clear that his quest was doomed.

It'd be ideological whiplash for the right-hand man of an attorney general so willing to go to the mat for states' rights. It also wouldn't be terribly surprising.

Much like Lansing Republicans for whom local control is a tenet easily discarded when a municipality wants to, say, offer legal protections to LGBT Michiganders, institute a living wage or ban plastic bags, Washington Republicans wax eloquent about the sanctity of state government when it suits their ideological agendas.

It's always been a mixed bag, here in Michigan: Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard quickly acquired a reputation for cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries; south of 8 Mile, dispensaries flourished. That's thanks, in part, to the murky guidelines for sale and use of medical marijuana outlined in the 2008 voter referendum that OK'd it. The state Legislature installed new requirements last year in an attempt to rationalize the system, and expects to start granting licences under the new regulatory system this spring.

State laws can't ever supersede federal, but the Obama administration acknowledged that American voters had spoken, and directed Justice Department resources to other arenas.